Pamirs
Pamirs names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Pamirs THE, ("roof of the world") the name given to
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THE, ("roof of the world") the name given to that part of central Asia where the frontiers of Russia, China, and Afghanistan adjoin. It forms the nucleus of the central Asiatic highland system, uniting the Himalaya and the mountains of the Tian Shan range with the Hindukush, and is traversed by a number of mountain ridges broad valleys, the average altitude of the intervening table interspersed with lands being 13,000 feet. It was traversed by Marco Polo and in recent years has been visited and described by Lord Dunmore, Lord Curzon, Col. T. E. Gordon, Mons. Bonvolet, Maj. C. S. Cumberland, Captain Younghusband and Sven Hedin. The term pamir implies a mountain valley of glacial formation. During the brief summer these valleys are strewn with patches of grass, which serve as pasturage for the herds of the nomadic Kirghiz, while for the rest of the year the whole of the pamirs are covered with snow. The pamirs contain much game. The only population existing in the region are Kirghiz of the lowest type In 1895 the Russo-Afghan border line across the pamirs was settled by a convention drawn up by an Anglo-Russian boundary commission. The Russian- Chinese frontier was not, however, affected by this convention, the only understanding existing being that entered into between Russia and China in 1894, by which Russia undertook never to interfere with that portion of the pamirs occupied by China. In 1899, however, the Russians manifested a desire to annex Sirikul, a province of the Kirghiz, and to break their treaty with China. large and constantly growing.
Pamirs THE a rotary movement
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THE a rotary movement, is usually dragged straight forward.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 the Pamirs were a blank between three empires, with borders half-settled by the Anglo-Russian commission of 1895 and no agreed Russo-Chinese line at all. Most of the range now lies in Tajikistan as the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, reached by the Soviet-built Pamir Highway and centred on the town of Khorog; the Tajik-Chinese boundary was finally fixed only in 2011, when Tajikistan ceded roughly a thousand square kilometres to China. The high summits, unclimbed in 1921, were conquered from the 1920s onward and renamed more than once: the highest, 7,495 m, was Stalin Peak, then Communism Peak, and since 1998 Ismoil Somoni Peak. Collier's dismissal of the inhabitants as "Kirghiz of the lowest type" would not be written today: the valleys are home to Ismaili Pamiri peoples speaking Eastern Iranian languages such as Shughni and Wakhi, with Kyrgyz herders on the eastern plateaux.
Written for this edition, 2026.